Sunday 29 November 2009

What kind of writer are you?

OK - my hands are up - I admit it: I'm a research-geek kind of writer

I put the plan in planning:
1 plan to write - time allocated
2 plan the characters and setting - create photo wall and pen sketches in the working note book
3 plan the 14 to 20 chapters that will give me the story arc - depending on length/ target audience
4 plan the main events in bullet format - whole book (any sequal type information that occurs to me as I go along)

While I write? I have a card index for each character mentioned (main to merely visiting) which I add to while I'm going along. I hate continuity errors in things I read, see or (heaven forbid) write.

Name drop moment - an-author-of-my-acquaintance laughed at me (Thanks, Steve Feasey)

He inspired me to attempt to work slightly more off-the-cuff. I was light-headed at the thought; the desk I work at was less heavily ladened too.

Enter NaNoWriMo Challenge

STAYING LOST

I planned my character profiles - making sure I knew them from head to toe and inside out (including their preferred underware!)

Then I planned the start, middle and end - the desired outcomes for the book.

To increase my writer-ly skills (:-)) I decided to experiment with POV. While writing the book I alternated, one chapter at a time, writing from JJ's (public school boy)and Nerysa's (ex-navy SEAL, bodyguard) perspective.

NOW THAT NaNo is NoNo

Spending November writing from different points of view should help me write the complicated multi-layers of the non-ghost story I have planned. Adding space and time into the mix --- challenge much! Imagine how that looks in my planning format :)

Saturday 28 November 2009

NaNoWriMo WINNER

NaNoWriMo - author!

Listening to Vampire Weekend
I STAND CORRECTED
You've been checking on my facts
And I admit I have been lax
In double screening what I say
It wasn't funny anyway

Good job it wasn't a few seconds earlier or I'd have to admit to listening to Jay-Z :s


Now, apart fom the editing, I have finished my second novel oI< - does this look like I fell over backwards? That was what I was aiming for.

Written for the age 8/10 - 12 Middle Grade - so bang goes my chances of getting Nathan Bransford to represent it :) (I knew there had to be a downside of writing MG - I was going to say boys - but it has wider appeal than that.)

STAYING LOST
Jon Jacob Ashton used to have family; he used to have everything. Now he has nothing between him and a very effective assassin but the hacker his father had arrested, the forger his mother saved from a beating on the Champs Elysee and the bodyguard who shot out the tyres on the family limo when she didn't get a job interview.

If they get lost... and stay lost... he might get to live.


Complete in 51,670 words

NaNoWriMo - so close to ending

NaNoWriMo - time is a ticking!
Listening to Sea Wolf - The Violet Hour:
In the dark you tell me of a flower
that only blooms in the violet hour

It isn't so much a violet hour as a pitch black one. I intend to finish during this 24 hour period so I have my Spotify playlist and endless cups of tea to supplement the chocolate supplied by the one who got more chocolate than a sweet shop for his birthday!

STAYING LOST

The boys ducked back out of line laughing. Their plan was so simple. They turned back to find the quicker way into Hyde Park. At the bottom of Tyburn Way was a corner - a narrow footpath that led to the public toilets. The fence was not much of a deterrent there. It was low and incomplete since the tree that had leaned over the metal railings had been removed before it could fall on some unsuspecting pedestrian.
Racing, chasing and overtaking,they dodged through parked cars and static traffic along the Tyburn Way. Jon didn't think of the others who had made their way along that route with less haste and a lot more trepidation hundreds of years before. The walk to Tyburn Tree had been slow and pained. Some had walked bravely; others, who were already broken, dragged out each step on their journey towards their executioner; Jon ran the route with joy – the kind that comes from unexpected freedom.

Thursday 26 November 2009

TWITTER does not run in school

The filter likes Blogs.

The writing I enjoy falls neatly into two, main, catagories: novel and poetical.

This week/term has been hard.

However, all things can be overcome with the support you receive from friends. I am glad that I work with Amanda. The Haiku says it all. Everyone should be so fortunate

AMANDA
You make a difference -
thoughts and genuine kindness -
small actions turned great.



NANO VERIFIED WORD COUNT: 41,151

Sunday 22 November 2009

So near and yet so far away

Word Count verified at 34,800

JJ finds himself at a very different kind of school

Tyburn Trees Junior still has an executioner - who has yet to learn the meaning of humane, although from the insults he uses he is aware of human - in its narrowest sense.

JJ has lost his father, his home, his school, his friends, his hair colour - he's trying to find out who he is. He is doing better at realising who he isn't.

“Who is he to tell us how to be?” Connor grumbled.
“Like, what’s with the bowing – like he’s some freaking prince or something.”
“Still, better him than that spaz Newt.”
“We’ll see. If Newt splats his nose off his face,” Bright thrust a fierce upper cut into the air as they walked, “I say we walk with his pack again.”
“I hate him though.”
“Better hating behind him, than having him hate us.”
“True. But it felt good - not being in Newt’s crew this morning.”
“Let’s see if Jonas comes back again tomorrow.”
“Bright... he has to live through today first.”

So, what's new?!

Saturday 21 November 2009

Piton perfect! Climbing the columns of NaNoWriMo shame!

Working hard to claw my way back on track - 4,000 + words so far to day - yeah!

JJ and Nerysa find the perfect place to hide out

In this genteel area of London, Connaught Close crouched behind its refined neighbours and lowered the tone. It was a rusted sliver of the old city surrounded by the silver of new money.
Jon walked into the dark that had nothing to do with the clouds that covered the moon. Even the street lights in Connaught Close seemed to shine less brightly. The rays were absorbed by the blackened stone walls that no one had sand blasted; although the neighbours would be happy to attempt it with a little dynamite.

Have a few more hours to work 30,300 currently

New beginnings and New Moon 'near Edgware'

I took time out to not write or work!! I think that's living life on the wild side!

Wandered over to Come in Character. Christine had posted an opening line that made me shudder. Not badly written, but so familiar that the original wanted to keep itself intact and warned me off even trying to mess with it - big boy on the playground style! We study Barrowquest - dull - and Eragon - the other thing - in Y6 during the Spring Term quest Unit. It took a long time, like minutes, for me to come up with something I wanted to say:

Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that...

thrummed discordantly with warring notes: the essence of life and the odour of death delayed. The cloying perfume, bound jasmine and tearose, insinuated itself into nasal passages and choaked the throat with gagging cough. What need was there for sight when the fetid whiff whispered to the primative brain that now would be the time to run?

I keep seeing knee-high, a-moral, daemons!

Then my teen and I set off to see New Moon - last year I dragged her to T1 this year no dragging was necessary. The wolf animation was a-ma-zing!

"Is that how you see the Were?" my Minnow asked.

I guess the answer was yes - for Alex and Raphael - but, I didn't see Caleb's dignified, always cautious, control.

Near Edgware - on a friend's blog she asked about titles - Roni wrote 'what do you call your WIP?' I'm almost ashamed to admit that I have a working title, or two, but then there is the secret name too - the one that cannot be named or it will bring bad luck to the venture ;) See, I wrote a joke smile, so it can't be true :s

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Sur - Ma'am - real

Went to London - State Opening of Parliament - School Cabinet - the Queen waved at me and I mean that ... our eyes met, so I know - she waved - like you do when you're the queen, and I wanted to write.

I felt weird.

STAYING LOST End of Chapter 7

He lay still and breathed until he knew each rib that expanded and contracted to allow the air to enter and leave his body. He wanted to imagine himself six-foot tall and fighting fit... to be some kind of avenging whatever-in-a-cape dealing vengeance and retribution. Why was he not cruising the streets, armed and dangerous, in his mind; why was he not crushing enemies under foot? Where were those thoughts? Why could he not make them, form them into scenes of retaliation? Why was there only one question and no answers?

Counting, and watching the chill blue light from the torch flicker on the wall beside him, filled the space in his head. Jon lay: moving his toes in his boots; squirming in protest at the pressure building in his bladder; rubbing the emptiness that bloated his stomach; banging to relieve the woolly, aching, unreality in his head. He used anything... everything... to push the question back into the vacuum at the back of his mind.

It wouldn’t obey... it whispered when he counted but shouted when he breathed.

The noises outside his head faded, the rays that cut the dark flickered. Despair emerged from the dark until it crowded round Jon’s bed. The blue torchlight faltered again and was gone.

Then there was nothing between Jon and the question that tormented him.

He whispered over the sound of the silence, “Who am I?”

Tuesday 17 November 2009

Still Writing

Falling behind.
Falling.
Not failing,
just trailing -
lagging behind,
losing the battle with time.


Wrote an assembly that wasn't even mine.
It's fine.

They're numbers not nooses.

Wednesday 11 November 2009

NEAR EDGWARE Fan mail 1

I have been meaning to write but this month has been crazy, I wanted to tell you that I loved the book and I was sad when I finished it so I read it again.
:-)

Monday 9 November 2009

Nanorimo update

I slaved this week: to keep the school work done and to make the NaNoWriMo count each day. I was forced to write until crazy hours to keep up. This Friday I marked as many things as possible, for hours on end. I cleared my lists and freed up time to write.

VERIFIED TOTAL: 15,435 Words
I've been playing with POV alternating between the correctly spoken public school boy: Jon Jacob Ashton and his ex-Navy SEAL bodyguard: Nerysa Na-gah Nuwuvi (Paiute).
I enjoyed researching legends to find a suitable hero that Nerysa could live up to; SEAL training; Gold BUD badges; watches suitable for diving at greater depths; gun performance with and without silencers;motorbikes;the correct desert cactu; ghost mining towns;the direction the sun sets in the one I selected to re-name;airfields suitable for International travel and a few other things!

CHAPTER 2
WELCOME HOME
Dust billowed behind the motorbike; it mushroomed high like an atomic cloud. It showed the world, or the 22 residents of Dry Creek anyway, that someone was coming – coming fast. Nerysa knew that this was not a covert arrival but that couldn’t be helped: her Mama was in trouble. She was one of the five people who mattered as far as Nerysa was concerned. She had called and Nerysa came.

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Too tired to focus on the keyboard for more than .... zzz

STAYING LOST

I did my first piece of Beta Reading with my captive audience. Wouldn't let the class go home until they'd read part one of the book ;)

Nah! Four enthusiasts read it through for Guided Reading - AF1, AF2, AF3, AF4, AF5, AF6 and AF7 all in one thirty minute session. I did them a favour, really! They had the opportunity to question the author and have an input into how the story could have been improved to meet the needs of the target audience.

I added the sections they thought would help them. Apparently it is a great idea to be rescued, at high speed, from a rugby match but could I slow down, and write more detail when I was doing it: music to my ears!


Nanowrimo Word Count verified at 3,997 zzz

Monday 2 November 2009

A fairly uneventful day

So, what did you do today?

Today I took a good Maths plan provided by one of the County Advisory teams and uplevelled it - state-of-the-art not bit-of-a-state! Then, I began on the English planning.

Would you like to know about AFs (in each area of the core subjects)? Or how to build tasks to enable you to have all the data you need - from every lesson you teach - to make APP and PPMs a breeze? Nah, didn't think so!>) *spot the chuckle*
However, the offer is there. Look me up in the dictionary you'll find me there under Geek :)

Then I went to my first firework display of the year - Oh! Ah!

Finally I wrote for NaNoWriMo!! !! !

STAYING LOST by Aleanbh!

Verified number of words so far: 2,649 - and a graph that shows me ahead of target. I'm going to be a happy bunny right up to the moment my alarm goes off at 06:30 and says I have to get up for school.

I went to Borders to chat to Steve - who might be feeling a bit bored passing the time in between signing copies of his book - which they actually sell at my mecca. Who Steve? Writer Steve! Well known author the Changling series.

Steve says he can stay home all day and write now! Colour me green! I wanna do that.

I'd do that. I'd be good, and write heaps, and have to be reminded to pay attention to the changing seasons let alone the hours that pass each day. Oh shucks!

Congratualtions Steve Feasey. (He just does books for a living!)

Sunday 1 November 2009

NANOWRIMO - started at 00:20

STAYING LOST
by Aleanbh Lambert-Stynes :)

CHAPTER 1
Ending up in hospital

Jon ran as if his life depended on it. His aching legs still obeyed his command to move... and move fast. His booted feet slid in the mud but he shifted his body weight until his movement was under control again. Sweat dripped from his short fringe and seeped into his eyes. He couldn’t reach to wipe the drops away so he blinked furiously to try to clear his vision. The wind blew refreshing air in at his open collar and, even as he shivered, he felt a rush of adrenalin that lightened his legs and the precious load he carried. Jon squinted into the setting sun and hoped no one else was there to block his way.

Muffled sounds registered as he ran: the loudest of these was his heart drumming wildly, and far too fast. Jon strained to isolate single sounds but the roar of his blood, as it pumped around his body, made everything else inaudible. He had to rely on his vision to give him the warning that he was going to be caught. He didn’t dare to turn his head to check what was happening behind. He focussed his eyes forward. He hoped they weren’t getting any closer but there was very little he could do even if they were there breathing down his neck. Until he felt the hairs there rising he would do nothing that might slow him down. So, he didn’t begin to deviate from his direct path. He didn’t weave or feint. He kept his eyes open and ran... ran straight and fast; there was no one who could help him now.



WORD COUNT: 654-ish editing :)

I keep thinking quantity, but my head is yelling quality louder.